Small Group Research Examines Jury Deliberations

The August issue of Small Group Research Investigates Jury Deliberations

Renee A. Meyers and Joseph A. Bonito, Special Issue Editors describe the articles in the Preface:

Following SunWolf’s introduction, the five articles (all by different sets of authors) describe and analyze varied aspects of the same jury tasked with two deliberations: the guilt-or-innocence deliberation and the penalty deliberation.

The articles characterize group interaction in a variety of ways, including humor (Keyton and Beck), conflict (Poole and Dobosh), discourse production sites (Sanders and Bonito), argument (Meyers and Seibold), and counterfactual communication (SunWolf). Finally, Laurie Weingart and Gergana Todorova, both scholars outside Communication, provide a critique and summary. They offer a synthetic framework that traverses disciplinary boundaries and sets an agenda for future research on groups where “membership is not stable, tasks are novel, and outcomes have high impact.”